With this post I will talk about setting up your first photo blog. How exciting is that? Before you begin you have a few choices to make. What will your theme be? Will you be doing a daily photo blog or will it be a once in a while blog. Where will you host your blog, on your own site or with one of the community blog sites? Mapping out your goals will help in making a smooth launch of your blog.

There are three distinct types of blogs

• Photo blog on a service such as blogger
• Photo blog on flickror or fotolog
• Photo blog that is self hosted with your own domain name

I’ll talk about each one a little …

Blogger

I have many friends that have blogs hosted on blogger.

Pros

1. Turnkey solution. Easy to use setup wizard where you can be up and running in under five minutes
2. User interface is easy to navigate

Cons

1. I’ve heard people complain of the commenting features
2. A lot of companies/schools block access. Your audience can be affected by this
3. At any point in time blogger can decide they don’t like your content and shut down your site

Flickr

I don’t consider Flickr a true blogging platform. But if you are looking showcase your photo’s and don’t want to write about them much Flickr may be for you. What a lot of people do though is use Flickr to host their photo’s and pull the photo’s from Flickr for blog posts. This gives you a way to reach people either through your blog or through Flickr.

Pros

1. The focus is on hosting pictures
2. Easy to use interface, upload your photos add tags and you are done
3. Large community of like minded people
4. Unlimited storage with pro account which doesn’t cost much.

Cons

1. No email notifications if someone comments on your photo
2. Lack of control of images in places like your start page
3. No batch download

Self hosted blog

Pros

1. Personalized domain name with .com
2. Flexibility to customize your blog to suite your needs
3. No risk for your content. It’s your blog, your rules
4. Unlimited themes and plug-ins

Cons

1. Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
2. Stopping spam is your responsibility
3. This option requires you to purchase hosting space

This is the option I would go with. With this option you have total control over what you do. With a self hosted blog you have the choice of using different blogging software. The ones I know of off the top of my head are b2evolution, Nucleus, WordPress, Textpattern and Geeklog. That being said, WordPress is the most popular of the bunch and has more options available to it like themes and plugins.

Moving forward with this site my focus will be on WordPress blogs. Come back often or subscribe to my rss feed for future updates.

I went out on a photo walk not too long ago downtown Leominster. These photos where taken about 2 blocks away from Main St.

It is easy to miss a sight like this. I never thought that downtown Leominster would have abandoned buildings in this condition.

My memory is failing me some, I think these buildings were the former Paragon Plastics. Once upon a time Leominster was a big plastic city. As a matter of fact I went to trade school and studied to become a machinist. At the time mold makers were in high demand but that is no longer the case. Most of the plastic shops and machine shops moved out of the country.

I love this candid shot. I don’t think my uncle even knows that I took this photo. I’ve got to get out there and do some street photography some time.

I’m an amatuer photographer striving to perfect my skills. I’m finding that I enjoy the post process work the best. I got interested in photo blogs when I stumbled across city daily photo back in 2008. Not long after that first visit I decided to create my first blog which started off as Leominster daily photo and evolved to under the glass. While I’m not actively posting on that blog anymore it still has 100′s of daily visitors.

Software I use:

 
Equipment:

 
I’ve owned photoblogcentral.com for some time now and never got around to doing anything with it. My first thought was to use the domain to create a shared hosting environment. Then I thought do we really need another wordpress or blogger?

So I decided that I’m going to take my years of technical knowledge along with my years of photo blogging and teach you the ins and outs of photo blogging. Along with that I’ll also offer services such as blog setup for those of you that do not want to learn the technical side of a photo blog.

Thanks for stopping by, come back often.

I was up in Maine over the long weekend. Woke up about 5 AM on Saturday and headed out with my camera. Here are a couple of HDR photo’s of lighthouses I took.

Portland Head light house

This one is one of the “Two Lights” lighthouses

I made it a point to use my ultra wide lens when I was out. I’m happy with the results.

For many years while driving south past Worcester I would come across a sign on route 146 for an exit to Purgatory Chasm. It would aways catch my attention and I’d make note to one day stop for a visit.

While heading out the door this morning with Ashley and Kaya for this endeavor, Marc grabbed his sneakers and flashed his puppy eyes look. Who could resist not bringing him along for the adventure.

As you can imagine with a place that has the name chasm in it there are a lot of rocks. It was great for Ashley and her friend as seen below. Not so great for Marc and I and his 10″ legs. We did not have the opportunity to see the named formations listed as The Corn Crib, The Coffin, The Pulpit, Lovers’ Leap and Fat Man’s Misery. Might be a good thing, look at the last title.

I let Ashley and her friend go off on their own for a little bit. They were able to explore a few caves while somewhat staying in my sights. Pictured here is the entrance to the chasm.

Marc and I wandered around the entrance where the terrain was a little more stable. It was here that I saw this stone hut that became my favorite photo of the day. I converted it to a HDR image and added a little drama to it. This is a style of photography that is not for everyone, but I’m starting to like this style more and more.

All in all not the visit I was hoping for, but everybody had fun. This stone hut may even make it on my calendar at the end of the year.

Well it is new years eve, Happy New Year everyone. For me it has been a good year. Lately I haven’t done much photography. I find I go through spells mainly due to lack of time. In any event I’ve been meaning to post my favorite photos that I’ve taken in 2009.

Choosing my favorites is harder than I thought it would be. I’ll start with this one here

The Rose

I bought my wife some rose oh back in January I guess it was. I captured this photo with my old camera which was a Nikon D50. This is not the original picture though. A few months ago I went back through some old photos and applied some knowledge I’ve gained in CS4. This particular photo I applied a couple of different textures.

Fast forward a few months and I find myself with a new Nikon D90. I’ve been happy with the D90 but I sometimes wonder if I should of held out for a D300. In any event the D90 saw a lot of use, over 3500 photos for the year. In July we went out to Lake Winnipesaukee for vacation. During this vacation I had a goal of capturing some photo that I liked enough to use for a gallery wrap. This is what I ended up with ….

On The Lake

Had this mounted as a 20×30 gallery wrap, came out pretty good. While on this vacation I also ended up with this photo that became one of my favorites

This photo was a total surprise when I transferred everything over to my PC. Didn’t realize I captured something like this.

The next couple of photos that made it to my favorite of the year list were taken at Sturbridge Village. I’ll tell you visiting Sturbridge Village is a photographers dream. Every time you turn around a new composition pops into view.

Daily Ritual

This is probably one of my favorites. I took this around the time that I started shooting in full manual. This photo was taken indoors using natural light. What you see is pretty much straight out of the camera. The tray is a little blown but overall I’m happy with the results.

I almost didn’t include this photo. The original had three turkeys in it. I loved the detail on the turkey pictured, but the other turkeys were out of focus and did the photo no justice. I went to work in Photoshop and added a background. I haven’t done much with layers and masks but I was happy with the results I’ve achieved in this photo.

On my commute to work I pass this barn most mornings. I’d been thinking about this photo and going back and forth on how to frame it best. The problem was directly in front of the barn was a fairly new car garage. It just didn’t fit in well with the barn as well as also preventing a straight on capture of the barn. I finally made it out and here are the end results…

This fall I had fun with colors. I was in a creative mood and had my camera with me almost anywhere that I traveled. This here is one of my favorites from that time period captured at rail trail in West Boylston.

Went out for a Sunday ride today with the hopes of capturing some of the fall foliage. It is not quite peak time yet, probably another week. I did stumble across this abandoned farm though.

Don’t know much about this farm. From the sign I did see it states that this apple orchard operated by the town of Hollis, NH. According to the sign they allow hiking on this property with the disclaimer to not pick the apples since this is a working orchard.

As you can see it appears that it has been quite some time since this farm has been in operation. Even the apples have been left to fend for themselves. Most of the ones I did see were all rotted out.

Overall it was a good day. I did find a little of the color that I was hoping to capture. I might even use one of these for the calendar that I’m putting together.